


Such Small Hands

by fabulous_but_evil



Series: This Is The End (Hold Your Breath And Count To Ten) [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: & also missed the deadline, Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Being sexist as always & lacking the promised ground-breaking-ness of a Johnlock kiss, Canon Compliant, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Episode: The Abominable Bride, F/M, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I mean domestic endgame parentlock, I originally wrote this for a german fanfic contest but as you can see I wrote it in english, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Making no sense at all, Multi, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Season/Series 04, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Season/Series 03, Reunited and It Feels So Good, S4 basically gave us what we wanted amirite?, Scars, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, Sharing a Bed, So apart from being incredibly OOC, Temporary Character Death, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Ugh, canon-typical trigger warnings, so i thought i might as well post it here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-06-13 06:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19597318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabulous_but_evil/pseuds/fabulous_but_evil
Summary: Sleeping in the same flat as Sherlock made his nightmares about the war stop. Sleeping in the same bed as Mary made the nightmares about Sherlock stop.Sleeping alone in the flat that used to be his and Mary's makes all his worst nightmares return.





	Such Small Hands

> _I think I saw you in my sleep, darling_  
>  _I think I saw you in my dreams you were_  
>  _Stitching up the seams on every broken promise_  
>  _That your body couldn't keep_
> 
> \- Such Small Hands; La Dispute

Sleeping in the same flat as Sherlock made his nightmares about the war stop. Sleeping in the same bed as Mary made the nightmares about Sherlock stop.  
Sleeping alone in the flat that used to be his and Mary's makes all his worst nightmares return.

*

In the first weeks after Sherlock's death - he refuses to think of it as suicide, because it isn't really an act of killing yourself when a criminal mastermind threatens all the friends you deny to have if you don't jump - his new favourite nightmare seems to be the memory of Sherlock saying his last words and falling over and over again. The words and the ending never change, but the meaning does. One time, the words mean _I love you_ and the fall means _I can't have you_ and John ends up waking up in cold sweat, getting dressed, letting his therapist tell him there are things he didn't say to Sherlock and keeping quiet when she asks him to say them now. The words leave a bitter taste on his tongue as he swallows them whole. _I love you, too, you bloody idiot._

*

The moment Sherlock returns from the dead his nightmares about Afghanistan are back.  
That Mary's there to hold him when he wakes up screaming night after night helps a little.  
After her death, he's lost. He has to face the possibility of Sherlock's and his own death before he can forgive himself and accept that this is what Mary wanted: John and Sherlock sleeping in the very same bed, relatively nightmare-free.

*

There are scars on Sherlock's body that weren't there before he died. John doesn't want to examine too closely how come he's so sure about that.  
Of course he has seen Sherlock naked before. Because Sherlock doesn't have a functioning sense of privacy and because he prefers his own doctor to the ER in most cases, and sometimes John agrees with him on that preference.  
He never asked Sherlock or even - God forbid - Mycroft about what happened in Siberia.  
He's not Sherlock, the self-proclaimed master of deduction, but he can guess where most of them came from, he has a phD and a lot of experience in medicine, after all.  
And then there's the gunshot wound. Mary's first testament of how she would always stay standing between them, even after she was long gone - cold and dead.

(It will forever remind him that Sherlock technically failed at keeping his promise to protect their family, that he practically broke his literal wedding vows, although it was Mary's very own - and highly illogical - choice to sacrifice herself for him. John will never understand it. Sherlock knows the reason, saw Mary working with Mycroft in his Victorian mind palace. So when they watch the tape and John murmurs, "So this is what she wanted," he doesn't correct him, doesn't say what he's thinking. _This is what my brother wanted. For both of us._ )


End file.
